Detroit Tigers to get new City Connect uniforms in 2024 before All-Star Game break
Any Detroit Tigers fans who’ve been pondering purchasing a new jersey — say, those who need a Miguel Cabrera replacement? — might want to hold off for a few months.
The team and Nike announced Tuesday that the Tigers will be joining two of their American League Central brethren in adding a “City Connect” uniform to their stable of outfits this season. The design hasn’t been announced, but the window of announcements has been narrowed to sometime between Opening Day (March 28) and the All-Star Game (July 16).
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It’s the fourth season of Nike’s “City Connect” uniforms, outfits that aim to incorporate the culture of a home city with nontraditional design aspects, colors and styles. It’s a program similar to the NBA’s “City Edition” jerseys with Nike, which gave the Pistons a black “Bad Boys”-themed outfit with orange trim this season.
In the AL Central, the Chicago White Sox were the first with the new kits, getting all-black jerseys with “Southside” in Gothic lettering in 2021. The Kansas City Royals followed that with 2022 uniforms featuring “KC” in a stylized font that paid tribute to Kansas City’s moniker of “The City of Fountains.”
The rest of the AL Central is following suit this season, with the Cleveland Guardians and Minnesota Twins also set to join the “City Connect” club. In all, nine teams will be getting the new gear for 2024: the Tigers, Guardians and Twins, plus the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays. For the Dodgers, it will be their second set of “City Connect” uniforms, replacing an all-blue “Los Dodgers” set criticized for being not all that different than their usual uniforms. That will leave two MLB franchises — the notoriously change-averse New York Yankees and the soon-to-be-relocating Oakland Athletics — without "City Connect" uniforms (although the Washington Nationals are retiring their cherry-blossom-themed set after this season.)
It’s the first major uniform addition for the team since altering the Old English “D” on the jersey in 2018. Although the franchise has worn alternate jerseys for special occasions, such as “Negro Leagues Weekend” and “Fiesta Tigres,” the City Connect gear will likely be worn more than once a season.
What might the Tigers’ new uniforms look like?
Be prepared for a kit outside the usual blue, white and orange. Although some teams (the Dodgers, White Sox and Baltimore Orioles) have hewed pretty close to their usual looks, and others have been virtual throwback kits (the Atlanta Braves and Seattle Mariners), others have paid tribute to other sports teams and gone radically off their usual looks.
There’s the Boston Red Sox, whose “City Connect” uniforms make them look more like the UCLA Bruins, with a blue/yellow combo honoring the Boston Marathon. Likewise, the San Diego Padres’ kit featured a pastel rainbow honoring their ties to Tijuana, their Mexican neighbor to the south.
A December report had the Phillies’ “City Connect” gear adopting the blue and yellow of the city’s flag. Along those lines, a Tigers uniform paying tribute to Detroit’s flag (or its motto, “Speramus Meliora” — “We hope for better things — and “Resurget Cineribus” — “It will rise from the ashes") is probably out.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers to get new City Connect uniforms from Nike in 2024
